It's crunch time with the pre-production at the moment with one week left to go until i start filming. Time has seemed to have flown by and and there i still so much left to do. The set is almost finished with only a few things here and there left to do, but there is still a lot of work to do with the puppets. Thomas is almost complete and i shall be casting the silicon hands later on today. Due to time restraints i had decided to opt for replacement mouths which attach to the head via a magnet and they will be finished by sunday evening with test animations done aswell which i will post up on here on monday. The clothes for Thomas that have been made by Olivia will be ready to pick up on Monday too so by Tuesday i will have everything done as far as the protagonist of the story is concerned. The demon still has quite a bit left to do and by monday we will see how much is left to do next week. elza (the cat) is something of a worry at the moment. The polyurethene foam that i had bought to make the body has been proving to be a bit of a difficult process as if the measurements are out slightly you end up getting a very dense foam or something exceedingly squidgy. I've bought a set of scales which are very accurate though so hopefully i can run off another test of the foam tomorrow to get the right consistency that i will need to be able to animate the character. I decided that the ball and socket armature for Elza was far too fiddly to do without the right equipment and as the welding facilities in the workshop at Uni have been taken away from us i cna't really fix the components properley. With this in mind i have opted for a wire armature for her puppet and this will also mean that i can produce multiple bodies so that if the wire breaks in the one i still have another i can quickly switch over to without having to mess around fixing the ball joints and casting a new body.
Do i think i will be on target with all the props, and puppets ready to start filming on Monday 2nd March!? Well i hope so! There is the slight possibility that i won't be which will mean that i will end up with less time to film than i wanted, but this is one of those things that happens. Plans you make, no matter how much you allow for problems, never go 100% as you would like. I think one of my problems with the film has been that it is a very ambitious project and even though i have had help from other people at times there has still been more work than we can deal with. I remain optomistic as always though!
The current crew that have been working on this project are the following:
Lorna Bailey: Set fabrication, and props
Joel Calvert: Original character concepts, and prop fabrication
Emily Ivens: Prop (furniture) farication
Olivia: Costume fabrication
Cherry Bryan: costume fabrication
James Cox: second phase character concept designs
Aimee Hibberd: CG effects and compositing (to be confirmed)
Matthew Harris, Megan Hoggins, Natalie Gibbs: mask decoration (props)
Niel: Signwrite/graphics
John William Bryan: Voice of Thomas Williams
Devin John Peter Lawton: Voice of the Demon (xigaligalig)
Daniel: Music composition (to be confirmed)
Edward Austin: Prop Fabrication
John-Lynton Bryan: Puppet Fabrication, Prop Fabrication, Costume Fabrication, Set Fabrication, Final Phase Character Concepts, Animatic, Storyboards, Set Designs, Script, Lead Animator, Director
(to be confirmed): Assistant Animator
(to be confirmed): Assistant Animator
The roles listed above are accurate at the time i write this post but as always anything can change at the last minute.
Prior to studying at the University of Wales, Newport i worked as a Graphic Designer and one thing i have found frustrating during my time on the course is that whenever you work with others you can never gaurantee that everyone will do what they were supposed to do right through to the end. I guess it is the nature of university life but i can't wait to get out into a more proffesional environment. The whole experience so far has been surreal but fun. I think that UWN is a good place to do animation especially the way it is structured. Part of me is going to miss the place too, but anyway. I digress from the topic of this blog.
Right, there are lots of images i would like to post in this blog, but as i am writing this i am not at my own computer and as such can-not get the images. I will create anothe rpost on Monday which will have production images for you to look at.
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